Exercise Scientist Critiques The 16-Year-Old on Steroids

Israetel frames this as a 'research lab monk cybertech warrior mode' approach: accept that you aren't getting the rewards now, and build yourself in a disciplined way so that later you emerge as the best version. He emphasizes that the natural trajectory from pudgy teen to jacked adult is extremely common — half of Egypt apparently looks like Zaid without drugs — so the drugs are unnecessary. The 'just wait' message is supported by his own life story of being a short, fat, ugly 15-year-old who later had a great life.

Israetel directly addresses Zaid with compassion, acknowledging him as a 'good kid' making dumb choices, and urges him to stop now to salvage height, hair, and mental health. He warns that staying on will only worsen all side effects, and the sooner the escape, the better the long-term outcome. He frames it not as moralizing but as a practical investment in future self.

Israetel mentions this after discussing how social media feeds teens exactly what they want to hear. An AI, prompted neutrally, will aggregate the medical consensus and warn about brain damage, height loss, etc., serving as a pocket-sized anti-steroid intervention that doesn't rely on an adult they distrust.

Israetel stresses that teens are smart enough to know when adults lie, so telling them looks don't matter backfires. He concedes looks do matter, but steroids as a teen won't actually improve long-term attractiveness because they cause baldness, bad skin, red complexion, and shorter stature — the very things teens hope to avoid. The better path is to accept the slow natural progress, which yields a taller, smarter, more emotionally stable adult who can be 'James Bond in his 30s'. He advises teens to 'recess into this shit, do that, eat' and build themselves over time.

Israetel explains that for teenagers under 18, and even under 25, reward circuitry and prefrontal cortex development are still underway. Flooding the system with supraphysiological androgens derails that maturation, leading to permanently altered emotional regulation and cognitive ceiling. Additionally, testosterone aromatizes to estrogen, and high estrogen is a primary signal for epiphyseal plate closure. Teens taking high-dose testosterone and other aromatizing compounds essentially guarantee early fusion, trading current muscle for future height — a trade he illustrates with a humiliating club scenario where a short king fails to get attention.

Israetel says that the bottom of the tren scale is 225 lbs at 8% body fat, and the top is Ronnie Coleman in his prime. A teen on tren who weighs less than that and thinks he looks jacked will be met with derision by anyone familiar with the drug scene. This means the social validation they seek from other lifters will actually backfire, adding humiliation to the health damage. It's a lose-lose: they destroy their bodies and still don't get the respect they imagine.

He argues that social media's harm lies in its ability to create echo chambers that reinforce what teens want to hear and filter out cautionary messages. However, the drive to use steroids comes from the timeless desire to be 'the fucking man' and 'swim in it', not from a new pathology. He suggests that just talking to an AI chatbot would talk most teens off the ledge because even a neutral source sees the flaws, proving that the issue is access to biased information, not an unprecedented disorder.

He uses a humorous analogy: 'if Harry Potter gained 5 lbs of muscle and lost 5 lbs of fat' — that's the female ideal. Meanwhile, steroids make you red, blotchy, bald, and emotionally volatile, all of which are repellant. The teen's strategy is counterproductive: they sacrifice height, hair, skin, and mental stability for a physique that gives them only passing respect from other guys, not the romantic success they seek.

The compound was originally designed to bulk livestock before slaughter. It has no human medical use and carries severe androgenic and cardiovascular risks disproportionate to even other steroids. Zaid injecting it daily exemplifies how social media bypasses any gatekeeping. Israetel's horror is that possession of this Schedule III substance is avowedly illegal, yet done openly in gyms.